He slipped into the tunic but quickly gave up trying to button it up. Hartnagel’s wiry frame required smaller clothing than the muscular Russian could comfortably wear.
Watching Akinfeev closely, he waited until he received the signal.
When it came, he carelessly stepped into view, maintaining enough cover to make him seem familiar to the Americans, and yet indistinct, using the uniform and helmet to appear to be Hartnagel waving them forward.
Both vehicles moved forward, and those observing saw signs of relaxation.
Moving into column, Smith’s jeep arrived first. The Squad commander stepped out immediately, keen to see how much comfort he could expect from his new surroundings. He suspected ‘Lucifer’ would leave them to stew for the evening, before introducing himself at some sort of stupid o’clock.
Opening the door, his nostrils received the first of two indications that he was not alone, that being the sort of smell associated with unwashed men gathered together in a confined space, closely followed by the second, more urgent indication, namely the business end of a pistol stopping a few inches in front of his face.
His eyes fixed on the deadly black circle, although he was aware of the sounds of silent killing behind him, as the rest of his squad was liquidated.
All except Pfc Fazzell.
The Dodge had disgorged its crew, save for Fazzell, who swung his Browning HMG from side to side, horsing around by exaggerating the actions of covering his comrades, and so missing the immediate signs of danger.
Too late, he saw what the shadows were trying to hide.
As those around him were swiftly slaughtered, the street-wise kid from New York watched in horror, his capacity to act temporarily removed by the awfulness before his eyes.
He pulled the trigger and was greeted with the silence normally associated with an uncocked heavy weapon.
Urusov, having cleared the misfired round that had granted Fazzell a short extension of life, put a shot through the young soldier’s left eye, blowing the back of his head off and sending his helmet flying.
The MP squad, all save Smith, had been slaughtered.
“Goddamned mother-fucking sonofabitch! I will personally chew him a new fucking asshole. Fire discipline, my ass! Get him on the horn!”
The sound of the shot had carried through the quiet and found its way to the ears of First Sergeant James Hanebury, and ‘Lucifer’ was distinctly unhappy.
Pfc Shufeldt spoke into the radio a number of times, but was unsuccessful.
“Nothing doing, Top. He’s either not receiving or he’s ignoring me.”
Hanebury heard but said nothing, not wanting to take his anger out on any of his own boys.
He turned to the nearest man.
“Rodger?”
His 2IC, Staff Sergeant Rodger Stradley thought for a second.
“Definitely north of us, Top. No doubting that.”
Hanebury grabbed the map and laid it on the bonnet of his Dodge.
“The idiot was set up here first time. Reckon he’d three choices on an alternate. Here… here… and here.”
“That’s the one then, Top.”
The first two choices were off to the north-west and west.
“OK. We do this as a drill, and by the numbers. Advance to contact. We’ll treat Smith and his bunch as the enemy, so everything from here on in is Indian country.”
Arthur Nave, an Oklahoma cowboy and driver of Hanebury’s HQ vehicle, went to do a classic Indian brave war cry.
“Don’t even think about it, Corporal, or yours’ll be the first scalp taken.”
Nave grinned and continued checking his weapons.
“Rodger, I want your element to move out here and gain position on this raised ground. Set up over watch and report in. Leave your .50 to cover from there… base of fire… then, when ordered, come in from the north-west, and fast.”
Stradley nodded his understanding
“I’m going to move up the ’46 here, acting as decoy… that should grab Snuffy’s attention… that’ll allow you to get good position, hopefully unseen.”
He tapped the map on the junction of Route 46 and a small track.
“I’ll drop off my M-8 here to cover, and also watch out for anyone bugging out to the west. The rest of my unit’ll come in ‘cross country, directly north here, so we can be seen by your fire base.”
It was a simple plan, as the best often were.
“For a dollar, I’d chuck a few sixtys on his useless head, but I don’t need the goddamned paperwork.”
Hanebury referred to the 60mm mortar that his unit also sported, acquired from a Legion unit during a feisty game of vingt-et-un. The twelve rounds of ammo had come as a goodwill gesture.
“Synchronise… on my mark 1350… three, two, one, mark. Get your boys moving… I shall move off at 1400, so you let me know when you’re in position and ready.”
“So, what does he say, Comrade Izmaylov.”
“Comrade Kapitan, I’m not sure of everything he said. Perhaps my English isn’t as good as I thought. However, he’s a policeman… they’re all policemen… and they’re doing training in the area, part of a larger, platoon sized group, spread out around Bickenholtz.”
The enemy vehicles had already yielded a number of white MP helmets, so the story held true thus far, although the Soviet troopers were also incredulous at the hardware the vehicles carried.
“Not combat soldiers then. Good. Anything else?”
“No other units in the stationed in the area, just the French traffic that’s passing through, heading north in the main.”
“French? I thought they were Germ… Fuck! We’ve been watching that group of SS bastards moving.”
Akinfeev grabbed his chin, his eyes suddenly staring and fired up.
“This we have to make known immediately.”
He turned to the boyish radio operator.
“How’s the radio, Comrade Radin?”
“No good, Comrade Kapitan. Burned out totally.”
“Go and see what you can scrounge from the enemy vehicles. They must have a radio. We’ll use theirs if you can’t repair ours.”
Corporal Radin was gone in the blink of an eye. Akinfeev had been hampered by a lack of communications since the radio had developed a terminal fault the previous week. Now that he had something major to report, he decided to return to his own lines if he couldn’t get a message through.
“Anything else?”
Izmaylov’s disgust was evident.
“The man needs new trousers, Comrade Kapitan. I hardly scratched him before he evacuated himself and talked his head off.”
“Well, we won’t take him with us anyway. Bind him, gag him, give him a tap on the head. We’re going to move away in any case.”
“Yes, Comrade Kapitan.”
Vetochkin offered one of the newly looted American cigarettes to his commander and Urusov.
Lighting up, the Captain shared his thoughts.
“Those SS bastards’ve been at the centre of things for the Capitalists, and you can bet that wherever they’re going, there’s going to be a problem of our commanders. We have to report this immediately, comrades.”
“So we’re going home, Comrade Kapitan?”
“If the radio can’t be repaired then yes, Comrade Serzhant, and as quick as we can, and we should thank our Amerikanski friends, who’ve provided us with the means to do most of it in comfort and style.”
Radin returned.
“Comrade Kapitan, there is nothing I can use for repair. Parts are different. Both of their radios are useless too. I can do nothing, Comrade Kapitan.”
“Both their radios are broken?”
“Yes, Comrade Kapitan.”
His opinion of the worth of these ‘policemen’ sunk lower.